


Undone

by Alligator_SpaceInvader



Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Anvil/Blackwater comparisons, Billy is charming, Blood, But also an asshole, Eventual Smut, F/M, Flirting, Neighbors, Not Cheating, Reader puts themselves in an awkward situation, but cheating adjacent, is that a thing?, neighbors to friends to enemies to lovers?, non graphic depictions of injury
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-20
Updated: 2019-02-20
Packaged: 2019-11-01 11:11:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17866178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alligator_SpaceInvader/pseuds/Alligator_SpaceInvader
Summary: You weren’t entirely sure what you were doing there, standing in your kitty slippers and oversized NYU sweatshirt in the dim, drafty hallway of your apartment building, clutching a plate of cookies while you waited to see whether your neighbor would actually answer his door or pretend to not be home. Judging by what little you knew about the man, you figured chances were 50/50 that he’d make an appearance.An encounter with your neighbor, Billy Russo.





	Undone

**Author's Note:**

> My feelings for the character of Billy Russo are deeply mixed, however I have fallen down the rabbit hole recently and can't seem to escape. Also, I know very little about PMCs or the Marines, so please excuse any inaccuracies. 
> 
> Also, this story has themes of cheating and temptations outside of a committed relationship, but will feature no actual cheating or adultery.

You weren’t entirely sure what you were doing there, standing in your kitty slippers and oversized NYU sweatshirt in the dim, drafty hallway of your apartment building, clutching a plate of cookies while you waited to see whether your neighbor would actually answer his door or pretend to not be home. Judging by what little you knew about the man, you figured chances were 50/50 that he’d make an appearance.

You were certain that he was in though, you saw him duck hurriedly inside less than an hour ago. Mrs. Zant, the only other tenant on the floor, had looked ready to corner him, but then you stepped off the elevator, back from letting your dog out, and distracted her, giving him enough cover to slink away unmolested and leaving you and Dusty to endure the elderly woman’s misguided attempts to guilt every young person she encountered into joining her church. It was a cold move, but you couldn’t blame the guy. Not really. Not when just last week you had pretended not to notice his desperate attempt to get you to hold the elevator, and let the door slide closed in front of his indignant face, just to avoid the same Mrs. Z who was approaching down the hall. With her _entire book club._

Maybe that’s why you were knocking on his door. To make amends for making him ride down four stories in a tiny metal box crammed full of the nosiest little old ladies in the Tri-state area. Come to think of it, you probably should have made more cookies if that was the case…

However, even as you tried to accept the excuse, you knew that wasn’t quite right. At least not entirely. Sure, you felt guilty about the elevator thing, but Billy Russo fascinated you.

He was handsome and charming and intelligent, a decorated former Marine who blended so well into civilian life that the only reason you knew he had served was a chance encounter last summer when you bumped into him not long after he moved in, waiting for the elevator with a huge camo duffel slung over one shoulder and a garment bag over the other. He had smiled at you, almost guiltily like you had caught him red-handed, and made small talk on the ride up to your shared floor. You recognized the EGA emblem on the bags - a cousin on your mom’s side was also a Marine, but he was the kind that kept his haircut ‘high and tight’ even after retiring and took every opportunity to wax poetic on his military career to anyone that stood still long enough to listen.

Russo, though, he had stubble and artfully slicked back hair and generally looked like he sprung to life out of an expensive, department store catalogue; he kept that side of his life hidden, not even bringing it up when you first met and he shamelessly flirted with you at the mailboxes, trying to impress you by subtly adjusting his sleeves and giving you a glimpse of the two-toned Rolex on his wrist until you gently informed him (and reminded yourself) that you lived with your long-time boyfriend.

It was because of said boyfriend that you generally liked to fool yourself into believing that you didn’t think much of him outside of admiring the lean, handsome figure he cut in a suit when you’d occasionally pass him in the hallway. But you did think about him. A lot. You’d catch yourself sometimes, fixing your makeup or hair before going outside even it was just to take the garbage to the shoot. Or on your more daring days, going downstairs braless to get the newspaper at the same time you knew he’d be going out for his morning run.

Hence the unflattering sweatshirt/kitschy slipper combo you had going on. You rationalized that if you _purposefully_ looked like you couldn’t be assed, then going out of your way to make cookies for a man other than your boyfriend and delivering those cookies by yourself when your boyfriend was away on a business trip couldn’t _possibly_ be considered problematic.

You were just being a good neighbor.

There was movement behind the door from what you assumed was Russo trying to stealthily flip the peephole cover and look through without giving himself away, but the doors in the building were old and creaked if you so much as looked at them sideways. You tossed the peephole a jaunty wave to let him know his position was blown and were rewarded with the click of a deadbolt disengaging.

Billy opened his door, narrowing his eyes suspiciously at you before scanning the hallway like he was expecting an ambush, perhaps worried that you were getting him back for earlier and Mrs. Zant was going to pop out from behind you and force him to listen as she went on about all the nice, single young ladies in her congregation. Once he appeared satisfied that you were alone, he folded his arms and casually leaned against his door frame. “What can I do for you, 4C?”

You faked a glare at that. He knew your name, but liked to pretend he didn’t. You liked to pretend to get mad at him for it. It was a _thing._ “Well, I _was_ going to give you these as an apology for leaving you to the book club wolves the other day, but now I think I might just go downstairs and leave them with the super. _He_ knows my name.”

Billy grinned. “Yeah, and I bet he knows your shoe size and your favorite color underwear too. Guy’s a real creep.” He made a show of heaving himself off the door jamb, giving you another smile and a beckoning nod before turning around and disappearing into his apartment, leaving the door wide open behind him.

You laughed, but your stomach did a nervous sort of somersault. You hadn’t planned anything further than ‘knock on door; give man cookies,’ so the invitation made you pause awkwardly in his doorway like the world’s least intimidating vampire waiting for verbal permission to enter. Part of you wanted to purposefully misread his signals and retreat back to your place, but you were still holding the stupid fucking cookies and figured he’d probably be insulted if you just left them on the floor.

The fact also remained that you were dangerously curious about Billy Russo and the thought of being alone with him - not just on the damn elevator or in the hallway, but in the privacy of his _home_ \- thrilled you more than you cared to admit. You had to go in, it would haunt you for the rest of your life if you didn’t. Besides, maybe behind his cool, suave exterior he was hiding a truly heinous taste in interior decorating or a penchant for collecting, creepy little clown figurines, the likes of which would completely _ruin_ his prospects as even a hypothetical sexual partner and free you from the minor hell you’d been living in as his very much unavailable, but still not _dead,_ neighbor.

Or he’d just turn out to be even more of a overly handsome, charming specimen of a human being and you would have to excuse yourself to go spend the rest of the night making a guilty, overcompensatingly sweet and solicitous phone call to your boyfriend in an attempt to assuage some of the guilt you felt at putting yourself in that position to begin with.

Either way, you weren’t going to find out until you actually bit the bullet and walked through the door.

“You wanna beer or something?” he called, thankfully completely oblivious to your internal, self-inflicted strife.

“Sure,” you replied, most assuredly because you didn’t want to be rude and _not_ because it gave you an excuse to stick around longer and satisfy your curiosity. You took a deep breath and followed his voice to his kitchen, pulling the door shut behind you.

Shuffling your way inside, you noticed that his place was set up similarly to your own, except the layout was flipped, like he lived on the opposite side of a mirror. He also had a lot less _stuff._ \- no clutter or pictures on the wall, sparse (yet expensive looking) furniture. Billy Russo was definitely a minimalist.

The only thing in the entire apartment that betrayed anything about the man that lived there was a tightly packed bookshelf settled against the wall the living room shared with the kitchen. You paused and took a quick peek at the titles; there were some heavy hitting classics; _A Farewell to Arms, The Brothers Karamazov, The Castle_ , that looked at bit like shelf-fillers. But there were also well-loved copies of the _Lord of the Rings_ trilogy and a paperback of _Jaws_ and a whole slew of non-fiction books whose topics ran the gamut from postmodern philosophy to “how to succeed in business” to the history of space travel.

You could have spent an hour in front of that bookshelf, reading the spines and trying to gather some insight into the man behind the seemingly random collection, but Billy was already opening his refrigerator and pulling out the proffered beer, and you weren’t sure if he’d take your snooping as harmless curiosity or downright rude.

You turned the corner into his kitchen just in time to see him use his expensive looking counter-top to pop open two bottles of a dark lager. “So, Y/N,” he began, gesturing to an empty bar stool. You took a seat and traded the plate of cookies for the ice cold beer. “What’s your deal?”

“My deal?” You watched him sit down beside you, his legs splayed wide and posture relaxed, the complete opposite of how you were feeling.

“Yeah, what do you do, what’s your story? I see you around a lot, sometimes with that really serious looking, really tall guy-” he clicked his fingers, like he was trying to remember your boyfriend's name. It occurred to you that the two had probably never been introduced, which in turn reminded you that the only reason Billy knew _your_ name in the first place was his shameless flirting. And boy didn't that just make your guilt a hundred times worse.

“Glen,” you supplied, your voice too loud in your own ears. Saying his name out loud warranted taking a long sip from your beer. As it settled in your stomach, you felt a little better. “He does look like he’s scowling most of the time, but I think that’s just the way his face is.”

“ _Glen_ ,” he repeated and you had to fight a full body cringe. “Guys got major, god what do you call it, resting bitch face?”

That startled a laugh out of you, and you relaxed a bit, leaning back in your seat as Billy smiled at you from behind his beer. “Ha, you’re not wrong.”

“Every time I see him in the hall he reminds me of this guy back in basic training. Really mean lookin’ dude, the size a freakin polar bear, none of the other recruits would go near him. Then one day, after SERE, he comes back to the barracks covered in mud and leaves and all kinds of shit, plops down in the middle of his cot and pulls a live, baby squirrel out his pocket.”

“Wait, what?”

“I shit you not. It’s eyes were still closed and everything. He kept it alive for a few days too, at least until a CO found out about it and made him leave it outside. Guy just turned out to be a gentle soul trapped in a tank of a body. Hidden depths, you know,” he finished with a shrug.

“Yeah,” you replied, lamely. The story made you think of Glen and how he tried to make you get rid of your dog when you first moved in together. You got your way obviously and he warmed up to Dusty eventually, but your face still got hot at the memory. His hidden depths weren’t always the most flattering.

“So, you got any of those?”

“Any what, baby squirrels in my pocket?” That earned you another smile, which effectively wiped your brain of any thoughts of your boyfriend. Dangerous territory, but you were finding it increasingly difficult to _care._

“Hidden depths. I’m sure you got some surprises tucked away somewhere.”

* * *

One beer turned into two beers, which soon turned into you lounging on Billy’s decadently overstuffed sofa with a _third_ beer, the two of you talking like you were old friends. It was kind of exhilarating, having the undivided attention of a guy like him and the longer it went on, the easier it became to forget the outside world and its consequences.

The conversation covered varied ground, from swapping anecdotes of your first encounters with the other tenants in the building, all the way to comparing his time in the Marines to your years in college and grad school. Billy turned out to be a rather gifted storyteller with a seemingly preternatural ability to make it seem like you had lived the tale right along with him, whether it was getting stuck in the elevator with the eccentric businessman from the second floor that everyone suspected had a coke addiction, or riding out a sandstorm in the desert in a humvee full of other men that hadn’t seen a shower or a toothbrush for nearly a week.

And, God, did he know how to make you feel interesting. He listened raptly to every word of you going on about your normal-ass job where no decision was life or death and for which you were never _shot_ while performing your regular job duties. He did wind up showing you _that_ scar though, lifting his shirt and his hips off the couch to give you a quick peak before plopping back down to tell the story behind it.

“So, you’re like a real bonafide war hero, huh?” you asked, still a little shocked at finding yourself sharing a drink with a person that had an actual bullet hole in them. The question seemed to make him squirm, but he covered it up by draining the last drops of his beer.

“Nah, nothin’ very heroic about getting shot. How I see it, they shoulda pinned the medal on the guy that pulled the trigger.”

Your buzzed brain wasn't sure how to process that, let alone come up with a response, so you just slapped what you hoped was a sympathetic look on your face and nodded solemnly.

He got quiet after that, rolling the empty bottle around in his hands, clearly lost in his own thoughts. You suddenly remembered the first time he had admitted to you that he had served, how uncharacteristically sheepish he had gotten when you had asked about the Marine Corps emblem on his bags that day in the elevator. At the time you had written it off as an awkward  encounter with the attractive new neighbor, but now you wondered if Billy just had an issue with being perceived as or treated like a hero. Which was... _a lot_ , probably even be too much if you were actually friends with the guy instead of just semi-friendly neighbors. Wanting to know more about him was one thing, but that really wasn’t any of your goddamn business. You did what you thought was best for both of you and nuked the train of thought before it gained any traction.

Feeling awkward, you moved to put your beer down on his coffee table and noticed for the first time that it was littered with what appeared to be samples for business cards, all with Billy's name, rank and the word “ANVIL” in bold typeface. Curious again, and more than a little desperate to change the subject, you reached forward and plucked one of the cards from the table, a slate gray one with embossed black text.

“What's Anvil?” you asked, running your fingers over the letters of the word.

Billy finally seemed to snap out of it and turned back to look at you. His smile was back and you almost let out a sigh in relief. “My firm,” he answered, proudly. “Private security contracting mostly, but we've recently expanded into tactical operations, providing training and support for- what?”

Your confusion must have shown on your face. “Am I supposed to pretend to know what any of that means?”

He laughed, and leaned across the couch cushion in between you to take the business card from you. His fingers brushed yours in a move that felt deliberate, but still made your face flush. _Dangerous Territory_ , you reminded yourself as Billy took the opportunity to scoot closer to you. It was the first thing he had done all night to betray the fact that all the flirting and back and forth between the two of you maybe wasn’t so harmless after all.

His thigh pressed against yours and you found yourself feeling dizzy, surrounded by the scent of his woodsy cologne and the heat from his body. You knew you should lean away, make an excuse, fake a headache, _do something_ other than just sit there breathing him in. But you couldn’t bring yourself to move.

And that scared the hell out of you.

Billy cleared his throat, his voice low as he explained. “Fair enough. Basically, we’re the guys the government calls when a more _traditional_ military presence isn’t possible or cost effective. It’s all private contracts, so my team doesn’t need to worry about random deployments or making ends meet on a military salary. There is a lot more freedom, for everyone involved. ”

You nodded, your brain lagging in processing his words when he was so close. It took an embarrassingly long time to connect the dots, but once you did your beer soured in stomach. “That sounds like _Blackwater._ ”

Immediately, the tension in the air shifted, the mood of the room swung from relaxed and flirtatious to deep discomfort and distrust. That air of mystery and intrigue that surrounded Billy turned stale and fetid in your mind. He was a _mercenary._

His jaw clenched, the muscles twitching under the stress, and he cracked his neck before answering you. “Right, so you’re one of them.” He pointed an accusatory finger at you before retreating back to his corner of the couch with a huff.

You bristled, still suffering from the emotional whiplash. “I’m sorry, what is that supposed to mean?”

Billy jumped on the defensive with such ease that you knew it had to be a common occurrence. He kept his voice low, calm, but every word was laced with acid.“You don’t like what I do, despite the fact that you have no clue what my firm even does let alone the sacrifices we make to keep your country safe. My team puts their lives on the line to protect American interests overseas. But bleeding hearts like you spit in their faces and vilify them and why? Because of the mistakes a handful of trigger happy morons made over a decade ago.”

“ _Mistakes?_ I’d say the slaughter of unarmed civilians by a private army acting with near impunity is more than just a mistake!”

“Please, you think the actual US military isn’t just as bad? Hell, they’re worse. You think I was a boy scout as a Marine?”

If your blood wasn’t so heated, if you weren’t so blinded by the sudden indignation and anger, you probably would have examined those last questions of his more closely. But unfortunately, the full meaning behind them was lost on you until much later, after some distance and time to cool down. As it was, you let your emotions take control and met his angry accusations with your own.

“You profit off of conflict and war!”

His laugh was nowhere near as pleasant now, tinged with.condescension. “And what, those things are supposed to scared or something? Welcome to the real world, darlin’. If there’s a market for something, someone’s going to be making money off it, doesn’t matter what it is.”

“Right. So, you’re saying it’s okay for _you_ to profit off the death and misery of others because if you didn’t, some other guy would just come along and do it anyway?”

“Oh don’t give me that sanctimonious bullshit. I’m saying if you got a problem with me or how I do my business, the door is right through there,” he finished, standing up and gesturing down the hallway.

You got to your feet as well, though immediately regretted it as he towered over you, his nearly black eyes burning. “I don’t even know why I came here anyway.”

“Yeah, sure you don’t sweetheart, “ he muttered as you brushed past him. As you left he called out to you.  “Thanks for the cookies, by the way. I hope you saved some for that boyfriend of yours.”

Your face burned, but you couldn’t let him get the last word. Almost against your will, you found yourself spinning around and shouting back. “Uh huh, thanks for beer asshole,” you seethed before  turning back around and slamming the door to his apartment.

As you fumed in the hallway, the sheer indignation making it hard to move, you heard Billy’s voice shout “Anytime” through the thin walls.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Kudos and comments are not mandatory, but greatly appreciated.


End file.
